Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, November 19th, 2013 (1:00-2:30 pm)

We had several plans for this show, which is why this posting is late. We wanted to present a feature devoted to gospel quartets. We settled on a feature devoted mostly to quartet recordings of the 1940s and early fifties–a period we haven’t yet featured in detail, although we’ve certainly played records from that era. When people talk about the “golden era” of gospel they generally appear to mean the 1950s, when Speciaity, Peacock, Nashboro, and other labels were issuing quartet recordings that have come to define the genre. Many of the groups that dominated the fifties were already active in the 1940s, if not earlier. The Dixie Hummingbirds, Swan Silvertones, both groups of Blind Boys toured and made records in the 1940s and we know less about these recordings in the same way that we know less about blues & R&B of the forties. Our feature will include early recordings by some of the biggest name quartets in gospel.

Also on the program, some Nashville artists and a couple of blues harmonica players from the West Coast.